‘Rock On!!’ is all gloss but no substance. It is about a four men rock band which having a strong passion for rock music and aspiring to make it big stray away and try reuniting after a decade or so to realize its dream again. The problem is that neither the passion for music nor the struggle is said in a telling manner. Instead what we see is a very loosely connected sequences from the past to present that leaves one guessing whether the guys were really willing to make it big in music. (The lead vocalist quite literally becomes deaf to the sound of music for ten long years and when reunion happens brings up the same level of sophistication that he had in the past!). The soundtrack of the movie is the only saving grace in an otherwise nondescript movie, which could have been better if the screenplay had packed more punch by making music central to the narration than the individuals. In the end what I felt was that the film pretends to be an honest and realistic movie but actually is far from it.

Poignant. Brilliant. I cannot praise enough the first novel of Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner. The story is about love, loyalty, betrayal and redemption set in the backdrop of the cruelty of civil war that wrecks havoc in the life of Afghans.

As I read through, I felt that I was in the grip of a master story teller. I recommend it highly and I am eager to read his second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns.